Parking assist system that gives a 3D Surround View standard in all cars

Renesas Electronics Corporation, a leading provider of advanced semiconductor solutions, and Cognet Embedded Inc. a prime embedded software supplier to the automotive industry have come together to jointly develop a 3D Surround View system that aids drivers for parking vehicles and low-speed maneuvering. “Renesas is expanding its relationship with software expert Cogent Embedded to deliver new solutions that address both of these growing markets with our R-Car V3M SoC that delivers 3D function and performance comparable to other surround view SoCs, at lower power and cost levels.” Stated the joint developers.

The system is designed with entry and mid-level car’s perspective. The solution is a best of both worlds that combines the Renesas R-Car System-on-Chip (SoC), an advanced SoC for the smart camera and surround view system and Cognet’s 3D Surround View software on a reference board that is highly customizable. With the aid of this system, OEM’s and tier 1 companies can easily customize their own 3D Surround View solution. Cognet Embedded has provides the facility of on-demand customization that gives an option to the system developers of creating an application software that will differentiate their software.

Surround View is a camera system designed for vehicles and It offers a full panoramic view that assists the driver to park the vehicle. There is a control display in the control panel of the vehicle that shows a 360° view of the surrounding of the vehicle, which is captured by the surround view cameras and this helps the driver to maneuver the vehicle to park and alert him about the obstacles in his path. It is imperative that the gen-next 3D Surround View systems offer object recognition along with display functionality. The R-Car V3M is a powerful solution owing to its features like lower power image rendering, integrated image signal processor (ISP) and the IMP X5 computer vision engine. It is suitable for use in smart camera applications, surround view systems and Lidar features due to its qualities like robust safety and excellent performance at low-power consumption rate.

The key points of R-Car V3M

The important features of the 3D Surround View system are as follows: 1. Full-HD 3D Surround View system that gives high-resolution images at low-power consumption: the R-Car V3M includes an Image Rendering Unit (IMR) that is solely responsible to provide a realistic 360° view of the surrounding and all this at a low-power consumption rate. The R-Car can deploy maximum four cameras of 1.3 Megapixel. These cameras do not need separate ISP for each of them because of a single, integrated ISP in the R-Car, which bring down the material cost of the system. The IMP-X5 computer vision engine gives the system the ability to recognize objects such as lane detection, pedestrian detection and obstacle detection. The video pipeline can generate up to HD resolution data to the infotainment system. All this lets the OEM’s and tier 1 to customize a full HD surround view system that offers excellent resolutions at lower power consumption.

A full-Hd 360 °surround viewThe surround view given by a 2D and 3D Surround View system

A customizable software: the solution also includes the widely used by industry players, Cognet’s 3D Surround View software. The system is an expandable and customizable solution for OEM and Tier 1s.

As in-vehicle infotainment and ADAS systems converge, automotive system designers require technologies that deliver predictable performance for safety while securing the flexibility to customize,” said Shinichi Yoshioka, Senior Vice President, and Deputy General Manager of Automotive Solution Business Unit, Renesas Electronics Corporation. “Renesas is expanding its relationship with software expert Cogent Embedded to deliver new solutions that address both of these growing markets with our R-Car V3M SoC that delivers 3D function and performance comparable to other surround view SoCs, at lower power and cost levels.” “We are excited about the opportunity our cooperation with Renesas provides. The R-Car V3M SoC provides the right set of functions for entry-to-mid-level surround view to run efficiently our state-of-the-art 3D surround view with pedestrian detection, cross-traffic-alert and lane tracking algorithms, an ideal combination of surround view and computer vision features,” said Artemi Ivanov, President of Cogent Embedded Inc. “Combining the power and cost-effectiveness of Renesas hardware with our royalty-free software allows carmakers to offer surround view in lower priced vehicles. We believe that with the new collaboration, Renesas and Cogent can contribute to making surround view a standard on all new vehicles, and we are proud to be part of that solution.”

Availability: the 3D view system will be put on a demonstration at AutoSens 2017 that will be held in Brussels, Belgium. The samples of R-Car V3M and the reference board will be supplied from December 2017. Cognet has estimated to supply their software from the 4th quarter of 2017